I suggest you do some “swing the bag” drills (or use a similar training aid) to get a better feel of how the bag / racket keep moving because of the momentum created while we “do nothing” to speed it up until the right time: https://www.feeltennis.net/tennis-serve-fundamentals/

Hi Paul,

I suggest you do some “swing the bag” drills (or use a similar training aid) to get a better feel of how the bag / racket keep moving because of the momentum created while we “do nothing” to speed it up until the right time: https://www.feeltennis.net/tennis-serve-fundamentals/

Q

one, pause, two!

It works for the serve. Now I’ll try it for a ground stroke.

Nice.

Thanks

Q

Thanks Tomaz, nice to hear that.
When I lived in Klaipeda Lithuania, I had a good friend who was the teaching pro for the former Lithuanian #1, Murashka.

The teachers name Roma’s Revutis.
He realy taught so little on technique, he has good drills, and is good at teaching mental toughness and competitiveness.

I think as your teaching spreads through Slovenia and Eastern Europe, you will have more top ATP players.

Great to hear, Ged.

Thanks for sharing your experiences and the improvement which hopefully inspires other tennis players reading this to follow your advice.

I have a good serve, but it seemed like I wasn’t having enough time to get more of a loose and full racket drop…

When I thought of your video on rhythm, in particular to slow down before the tipping point or drop.

It was the solution, because I had already found the swing path leading to the trophy position and drop.

Now that I slowed down the take back in a relaxed slower rhythm, I had more time to get a natural free flowing feel through the drop.

Then then speed up with great racket head speed at contact.

Thanks again for a hall mark tip, I will always have with me when serving.

I’m thinking of returning in Lithuania in a few years. I could get over to Slovenia some time for a personal lesson with you.

Hi Jon,

That’s a problem that basically everyone faces and it’s a very good question.

I like to work on causes and symptoms.

The cause is that you want to hit a better serve than usual. That will make you rush it and actually serve WORSE than if you just served normally.

This logic might help you deal with it and convince yourself to serve just as usual.

The method all pros use to maintain their rhythm and flow is the ritual where they follow exactly the same procedure when it comes to bouncing the ball, fixing their shirt (Nadal?), breathing patterns and following exactly the same timings of their serve.

You want to access your automatic serve and just do it and not keep changing your serve depending on the opponent or the score.

Take a look at the rituals of the pros and then develop one for yourself. Make sure you focus on calm breathing while you’re doing that.

Thanks for sharing, Alan.

It’s always great to get more ideas flowing so that readers can experiment them and see if they prefer McEnroe rhythm, Federer rhythm or perhaps Ivanisevic / Leconte / Dolgopolov rhyhtm.